Keeping up with the Joneses is a lot tougher in the age of overshare.

It’s not that conspicuous consumption is an emergent behaviour; as an economic theory it dates back to 1899 (first coined by Thorsten Veblen in The Theory of the Leisure Class) and people began buying for status over survival long before that. I guess what it must come down to is the influx of mobile apps and services that encourage checking in every aspect of your life.

Conspicuous consumption in the 80s

[*Disclaimer: I was just a wee lass in the 80's, so my assumptions are mostly drawn from various clichés and stereotypes, Google, The Yuppie Handbook (Piesman & Hartley, 1984) and fictional characters such as Gordon Gekko & Patrick Bateman.]

image source: http://www.bnz4bozo.com/2009/03/mb4jl-big-old-tard/

It was all about the power suit – perhaps you couldn’t discern which designer it was, but the fit of it told you it certainly wasn’t off-the-rack. He’d drive a Mercedes S-Class, which you knew was his by the custom number plates.

The sizable Rolex on his wrist might first catch your attention, but your gaze would eventually settle on the far more sizable cell phone in his hand.

If you were to lunch with him it’d certainly be at the trendy new restaurant, where he’d swill his Sancerre and pick at his tuna sashimi while telling you of his recent trip to Aruba. He’d order black current sorbet for dessert, audibly vowing to run 12 miles in his building’s health club that evening.

I’ve certainly gotten some of the details of that wrong (Umm, Mercedes S-Class? Please. It was all about having an SUV in the 80s), but luckily that’s not what’s important. The point I’m trying to make is that in the pre-digital era, conspicuous consumption was observed by personally witnessing it or through a personal recount (from either participant or observer) – as a one-to-one or one-to-few communication (assuming we’re not talking celebrities and such.)

Vs. conspicuous consumption today

What happens when you take a material girl boy and put him in a digital world?

The Internet eliminates time and space boundaries and let’s you connect with anyone and everyone. It gives you a soap box and lets you play publisher (translation: one-to-many). What are you doing? What are you working on? What’s on your mind? it asks with interest. And, as mobile technology advancements allow you to remain online while on-the-go, online and offline merge to create a land where check ins rule and there’s a nice little digital leaderboard to let you know exactly how you stack up against the Joneses.

Through Blippy (a social site where users share their credit card transactions), you can see that he’s just used his Visa Platinum debit card to snag himself a custom made Ermenegildo Zegna suit (a steal at just $2,892.14!). He blogs about the Lamborghini he’s currently dying for, but back in his Blippy feed you saw that not too long ago he bought XM satellite radio for his ‘Vette.

His latest Foursquare check in places him at Neiman Marcus and because he uses Social Currency (an American Express application that lets people share details about items they buy or want to buy alongside their Foursquare check ins), you can see that he just dropped $642.37 on 1,000 threadcount Egyptian cotton sheets.

At lunchtime, he checks in to Balthazar on Facebook Places and shortly after posts a picture of his petite filet mignon on Foodspotting (a site and mobile app that allows users to discover and recommend good food through photos) and tasting notes for the cab sauv he enjoyed on Cork’d (a social network for wine aficionados).

His Flickr photostream documents his recent trip to South Africa to catch a couple of the World Cup soccer games and you see that he’s got an upcoming trip planned to London through Dopplr.

You know that he’s a trim 165 lbs because he’s linked his Withings scale so it publishes to his Twitter feed – which he maintains by running an average of 10.6 miles a day as documented by Runkeeper.

He owns an iPhone, iPad and Blackberry – you know this because each time he emails you there’s a different little signature at the bottom telling you which device he sent it from. But, he’s not just about gadgets and gear – you see through Facebook Causes that just last week he donated $50 to cancer research and he used his CauseWorld check ins to offset carbon.

His highbrow taste in entertainment is evidenced by the selection of art house films, documentaries & world news that he checks in to on Miso (a Foursquare-like service for entertainment where users check in to the tv shows and movies they’re watching) and GetGlue (a similar entertainment sharing service) has any remaining leisure activities covered – the music he’s listening to, books he’s reading, wine he’s drinking and even the topics he’s currently pondering.

SignPost (formerly Postabon)

Redefining conspicuous consumption

In the wake of the economic downturn many declared the end of an era for conspicuous consumption; however, I disagree – it’s merely redefining itself and evolving with the status quo. The Joneses had to tighten their belt a couple of years ago so frugality replaced opulence as the ‘in’ thing… Hello, recessionistas – and services like SignPost, where users earn ‘karma points’ for posting deals and discounts they find.